Dan Kaplan is a 66-year-old retired retail manager and salesman, though the consensus is that he looks younger than that. These days, he mainly just plays the horses. Last weekend represented his apex as a horseplayer. At the Orleans in Las Vegas, he won the Horse Player World Series, netting over $326,000 between the winner’s share and day two money.
His horseplayer origins date back to his college days. “I had a friend who grew up in Santa Monica and I started going with him,” he said. “I fell in love and I’ve been playing ever since.”

Dan Camoro, 55, is a man with good stories. Like the time his horse trainer uncle robbed a bank and a movie was made about it. The movie was "A Nice Little Bank That Should Be Robbed," and Camoro's uncle, Angelo P. John, was played by Mickey Rooney. Years later, when Uncle Ange, got out of jail, his brother ridiculed him constantly about his poor life choices.
"When I was a kid my old man would always say, 'Danny, hide your piggy bank, Uncle Ange is coming over.' "

Chris Skotz is serious in his pursuit of winning the National Handicapping Championship Tour. So much so that even though he's already double-qualified for the NHC, he was multitabling in NHC contests last Saturday.
"I figured I would play one NHCQualify.com entry and then hedge between both the DRF Bets contest and NHCQ as it played out," he said.

In an action-packed sequence on Saturday, three players qualified for the National Handicapping Championship on NHCQualify.com. Dan Camoro, a former winner of the Public Handicapper Challenge, was first, followed by Anthony Laurino and John Nichols. All three will be profiled on DRF.com later this week.

Online handicapping contests have been a godsend for residents of the great state of Texas. Just ask 53-year-old electrical engineer Dan Wilde of Austin, who won a seat to the Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge on BCQualify.com last weekend.
“The closest racetrack to me is probably Retama Park down in San Antonio,” he said, “so when they took away our online betting capabilities I wasn’t able to bet on horses as much as I used to but contests helped fill that void.”